Islamic Kosovo: a Threat not a Country

Of course, nothing happens in a vacuum. And while the declaration of an independent Kosovo is a death sentence for the remaining Christian Serbs the reverberations extend far beyond the borders of Serbian Kosovo and Bosnia.This undeniable victory for Muslims will "inspire" Islamic savages worldwide as exhibited by the barbarians in Gazastan.

Perhaps if the "Palestinian" Arabs declare independence unilaterally (like Kosovo) Israel will no longer have to fund, feed, and water the Islamic jihad in Gazastan. Instead it can finally fight for its survival against a hostile, invading enemy.

I suppose we can expect Muslims to declare statehood in other European countries like France, Britian, The Netherlands etc. sometime in the future.

Palestinians and a Kosovo Pipe Dream

Yasser Abd Rabbo makes wave with his Kosovo headline

The proposal by senior Palestinian negotiator Yasser Abed Rabbo put forward Wed Feb. 20 to copy the Kosovo example if Israel continued to mark time in talks for a Palestinian state was quickly knocked down by his colleagues, but eyed with interest by Israel.

Tuesday, prime minister Ehud Olmert and foreign minister Tzipi Livni held another round of negotiations with Palestinian leaders Mahmoud Abbas and Ahmed Qureia.

There is a must read piece by James George Jatras who was on my radio show with Julia Gorin a few months ago (Listen here)

'Independent' Kosovo: A threat, not a country Exclusive: James George Jatras notes Christian Serbs are now 'bracing for the worst'

Abraham Lincoln was fond of asking the rhetorical question: "If you call a tail a leg, how many legs does a dog have? Five? No, calling a tail a leg don't make it a leg."

That pretty much sums up the recent unilateral declaration of independence by Albanian Muslims in the Serbian province of Kosovo. Several countries, disgracefully led by the United States, have recognized Kosovo. Major media have hailed creation of the "world's newest country." But calling Kosovo a country doesn't make it one.

Serbia has denounced the move as the illegal creation of a "separatist entity" on its sovereign territory and has handed down criminal indictments against several of the top Albanian Muslim leaders. Now under way is a sharp global competition to see which governments will recognize Kosovo and which will not. Under heavy pressure from the U.S. State Department, most European countries will meekly comply. Some, like Cyprus with its Turkish-occupied north and Spain with its Basque separatist movement, will not.

In short, an action State Department bureaucrats touted as "settling Kosovo's status" has resulted in anything but. Outside of Europe, the picture is even fuzzier. Russia will reject Kosovo's independence, and expected to take the same line are China, India, Indonesia, Nigeria, South Africa, Brazil and many others. Russia will veto any effort to extend Kosovo membership in the United Nations.

Any sovereign state with restive ethnic or religious minorities would recognize Kosovo at its own peril. What Washington seeks to inflict on Serbia today could be the fate of the American southwest tomorrow. Israel, in particular, is closely pondering its next move. While loath to anger Washington, Jerusalem must consider that a Kosovo precedent could, absent any negotiated agreement, prompt proclamation of a Palestinian state, to be recognized by Arab and Muslim regimes. The same precedent could apply to heavily Muslim areas such as Galilee and the Negev within Israel's formal borders.

UPDATE: Fitzgerald on Independent Kosovo. Nails it.

Even within Europe there are nations that oppose this independence -- Spain -- and others where many are uneasy. It would have been politically possible for the American government to have thought a bit more about the implications, the consequences, of having another Muslim state -- the product of centuries of Ottoman rule -- within Europe, and to have thought a bit more about the historical treatment of the Serbs under that same Ottoman rule, and their understandable bitterness.

There is an independent Albania. Those Albanians who might wish to be in a state that politically embodies their desires could move. The notion that when Muslim populations exist, they must never be asked to endure minority status, and that only the non-Muslim populations are to be asked to do so, is wrong.

[...]

One are the tricks one can play with the region whose heads are being counted. If you rip Kosovo out of Serbia, then you will indeed have an area, “Kosovo,” where the Albanians constitute most of the population. Is that the end of the matter? I can find, and so can you, all kinds of places, now part of larger countries, where this or that minority constitute, in a particular area or city, the majority -- even if they are the minority elsewhere. So what?

Surely there were other things to consider. What has happened to Serbian monasteries and churches in places now under full Albanian control -- that is, those Albanians who are Muslim? Is there a tradition of treating non-Muslims, in this case Serbs, well or ill?

In alerting people to the attacks on Serbs, to the destruction of ancient monasteries, on the infiltration into the area of Arabs with a brand of Islam quite different from the relaxed, syncretistic, version -- not exactly full-bodied Islam in practice, because that local practice was affected by the centuries of proximity to non-Muslims, and to the effect of Communism, one is not endorsing any massacres by some Serbs. One can distance oneself -- most Serbs do, unfeignedly -- from Milosevich and those atrocities that were committed by some Serb forces. And one can also keep in mind both the exaggerations of those atrocities, and the minimizing or even ignoring not only of the atrocities committed by the Muslims, as well as the entire history of the area, the centuries of Muslim rule, the devshirme, and the deep fears evoked when Izetbegovic wrote that he intended to create a Muslim state and impose the Shari'a. Had the Western world shown the slightest intelligent sympathy or understanding of what that set off in the imagination of many Serbs, there might never have been such a reaction, and someone like Milosevic might never have obtained power.

Why wasn't there? Why didn't those in the West study what Izetbegovic said? Why didn't they read what Serb historians, and writers, including Ivo Andric (in his doctoral dissertation, recently-reprinted, "The Development of Spiritual Life in Bosnia under the Influence of Turkish Rule") were aware of, and that had never been forgotten? When Clinton ordered the bombing of the Serbs, had he heard, ever, about the devshirme? Did he know that Izetbegovic had written about imposing the shari'a? No, of course not. But had he, and had others, they might have reassured the Serbs long before, and helped to make them less panicky, less prone to give power to someone like Milosevic. The West entirely mishandled Serbia.

And then there is the larger scheme of things. Does it make sense, at this moment in history, to give Muslims the sense that they are on the march, that they are establishing beachhead after beachhead in Europe itself -- even if, for all we know, that sense of triumphalism is based on a misunderstanding of the devotion to Islam of the Albanians (now "Kosovars") in question? Assuming that the Chechens have a point (and they did have a point, considering the history of Stalin's treatment of them), was that reason enough to support the Chechens against Russia, or should one have refrained from so doing, because of the larger context, in which any Muslim victory feeds the assurance that other victories are sure to come, that Islam is unstoppable?

Perhaps the rule should be, all over the Western and larger Infidel world, this: whatever makes the Umma happy, or the O.I.C. happy, is to be opposed for that very reason. That's a rule of thumb. What, after all, is Man, if not Homo pollex?

FITZGERALD!